Explaining Obama's Fixation with Israel

Why does Barack Obama focus so much on Israel and its struggle with the Arabs?

It's not just that he's spending days in Israel this week, but his disproportionate four-year search to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. His first full day as president in 2009 saw him appointing George Mitchell as special envoy for the Middle East and also telephoning the leaders of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. The White House press secretary justified this surprising emphasis by saying that Obama used his first day in office "to communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term." A few days later, Obama granted his first formal interview as president to Al-Arabiya television channel.

Nor did he subsequently let up. In June 2009, Obama announced that "The moment is now for us to act" to ease tensions between Israel and its neighbors and declared "I want to have a sense of movement and progress. … I'm confident that if we stick with it, having started early, that we can make some serious progress this year." In May 2011 he announced impatience with regard to Arab-Israeli diplomacy: "we can't afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades to achieve peace." The new secretary of state, John Kerry, repeated these sentiments in his Jan. 2013 confirmation hearing: "We need to try to find a way forward."
Why this fixation on the Arab-Israeli conflict, which ranks only 49th in fatalities since World War II? Because of a strange belief on the Left, rarely stated overtly, that this issue is key not just to the Middle East but to world problems.

For an unusually frank statement of this viewpoint, note the spontaneous, awkward comments of James L. Jones, then Obama's national security adviser, in Oct. 2009. Addressing J Street, he mentioned "pursuing peace between Israel and her neighbors" and continued:

Of all the problems the administration faces globally, that if there was one problem that I would recommend to the president that if he could do anything he wanted to solve one problem, this would be it. Finding a solution to this problem has ripples that echo, that would run globally and affect many other problems that we face elsewhere in the globe. The reverse is not true. This is the epicenter, and this is where we should focus our efforts. And I am delighted that this administration is doing so with such enthusiasm and commitment.

Although delivered a year before the Arab uprising, this statement is worth parsing because it provides an important insight into the White House worldview.

Solving the Arab-Israeli conflict would "affect many other problems that we face elsewhere in the globe." Jones implies that the conflict's continuation exacerbates those problems. In one sense, his point is trite: of course, ending any conflict improves the overall atmosphere. But it staggers the imagination to think that the White House awaits resolution on Jerusalem and Palestine refugees to handle Kurdish restlessness, Islamist assaults, Syrian civil insurrection, Iranian nuclear ambitions, Egyptian economic travails, and Yemeni anarchy.

"The reverse is not true." Why would solving other problems not ameliorate the Arab-Israeli conflict? No proof backs up this blithe, illogical drivel. Defeating Islamism, obviously, would indeed help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, as would deflecting the Iranian bomb.

"This is the epicenter." The Islamist surge in 2009 had already riven the Middle East into Iranian- and Saudi-led cold war blocs: Israel and the Palestinians were not then or now the regional center. Arguably, Iran, Turkey or Saudi Arabia is.

"This is where we should focus our efforts." Here we get to the nub: Jones wants a focus on housing in Jerusalem and electricity grids in the West Bank rather than on stopping the Iranian nuclear program, assuring oil and gas supplies, dealing with the pattern of dictatorships vs. Islamist insurgencies, or dealing with the increasingly rogue government of Turkey.

At least Jones did not make the outlandish and borderline antisemitic claim that Israel is responsible for all problems in the Middle East; but his milder version of this canard is no less bone-headed. His analysis, sadly, neatly fits the anti-Zionist mentality that increasingly pervades the left wing of the Democratic party.

To understand Obama's visit to Israel, the next four years, and European Union diplomacy, keep this strange and contorted logic in mind.